Business Online – “TOUCH wood†and be lucky. Or as Americans say, “knock on woodâ€Â. Wood, or rather timber, has certainly brought a lot of luck – and wealth – to many investors in the United States. There, timber now represents a significant proportion of the portfolios of many large institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts State Pension Fund.
Most pension funds in the US, and many American universities, now have investments in timber. Yet in the UK, this asset class is almost unknown, outside the world of big, private landowners who in the past regarded forestry plantation as an attractive way for them to pass wealth from one generation to the other.
UK fund managers have long regarded investment in timber growing as risky and poorly regulated, an industry also dominated by the state-funded Forestry Commission.
Private investors have usually been lured into this investment more by uncertain tax offset attractions, rather for the return it offered. As an investment, forestry has gone in and out of fashion in the UK.
